Deciding to rebrand is an undertaking that will have a lasting impact on your brand’s reputation and overall position in the marketplace. Inspiring confidence and trust with a refreshed brand look and feel, without alienating current customers, presents a unique challenge and requires thoughtful strategy and planning to determine what will best resonate with your target audience.
A rebrand could mean several different things. It could be as simple as a refreshed or redesigned logo, graphics or color palette. Or it could be as complex as a hard, strategic look at the very basics of your business to take it to another level and making sure the brand aligns with your current offering or any changes in values or desired customer perception. Or it could be a mix of both of those things, depending on how much of an overhaul is needed. Here are some instances where a strategic rebrand is justified and the reasons why, so you can determine if your own brand could use a facelift.
An upcoming anniversary or milestone
If your brand has been around for 25 years or more, that’s something to be celebrated! It demonstrates your longevity, stability and success in the industry. Utilizing an anniversary as a launching point for a rebrand is a smart move to strategically showcase where you’ve been, where you’re going in the future and deepen your brand’s value to customers. Whether it’s refreshing your logo to commemorate the occasion or executing a larger campaign to play up your history and continued commitment to customers, an anniversary rebrand should be tailored to put your business’ strengths in the spotlight.
The NFL chose an anniversary milestone – in their case, 100 years – to reinforce and celebrate what makes fans love the game of football (and of course, the NFL itself) and how the sport brings communities together. In their case, they utilized an updated logo, TV spot and an All-Time Team selection just for the occasion. To mark 40 years on TV in 2015, SNL created a special animated logo that felt more modern yet nodded to 1970s neon lights – a clever reference to its strong New York City origins. They also added “40” to the logo in such a way that the number could be easily removed after the anniversary to have a longer shelf life. The iconic show also had a hyped-up, red carpet event and a TV special showcasing beloved past and present players, more than 80 celebrity guests and a dive into the history of the show, including cast audition tapes. And, of course, it brought back its most iconic sketches with all-new content. By turning this milestone into a buzzed-about, celebratory event, SNL garnered 23.1 million viewers and reminded fans of what they loved most – and continue to love – about late-night’s most renowned variety program.
A potential sale, merger or acquisition
Another instance where a brand refresh might be right is if your company is acquiring or merging with another company. Whether or not your company will be folded into the new company’s look and feel – or whether the combination yields a whole new brand identity – largely depends on which brand has the strongest perception, equity and sales. It’s also important to ensure that both companies’ values, messaging and strategic positioning publicly align under one new umbrella so as to not alienate devoted customers of either.
For example, 7-Eleven – one of the c-store channel’s category leaders – has a history of consolidation of smaller, less well-known stores and subsuming them under the 7-Eleven name and identity. But when they acquired Stripes (formerly under the Sunoco brand), they also announced it would still retail under the Stripes name and identity, mostly due to the strength of Laredo Taco Company’s foodservice sales within Stripes stores. Loyal Stripes customers felt reassured they were still getting the same authentic service and snacks they had come to expect from their beloved Stripes stores because 7-Eleven smartly left their brand identity and iconic logo intact.
Other times, when both companies have equally strong consumer loyalty and brand equity, a collaborative approach that highlights both brands in a savvy way might be in order. When Orange and T-Mobile, two of UK’s telecom giants, merged, they created a brand transition campaign that eased customers and employees into the merger with a joint message that telegraphed both brand’s identities clearly in a series of clever ads that “talked” to each other. This collaborative strategy paid off a year later, when they again merged to form a whole new brand, EE, that was centered around 4G technology. The huge success of EE was the result of smart planning with savvy brand architecture and a thoughtful rebranding strategy designed around long-term stability.
A change in the market or new competition
Are you struggling to compete in a flooded market or the market itself has shifted so that your offerings no longer align with, or appeal to, customers’ needs? Pizza Hut found itself in this situation back in 2013, when the pizza market became overrun with new restaurants offering more artisanal, handcrafted pizza options with fresher ingredients. On the opposite end of the spectrum, grab-and-go, by-the-slice restaurants surged in popularity for their value and convenience. Pizza Hut was perceived as neither totally fresh nor totally cheap, so their market share dipped significantly. After extensive research to determine what millennials, their target, wanted out of their pizza, it became clear that the younger generation craved better options: fresher, more organic ingredients, bold, ethnic flavors and exciting recipes. Pizza Hut successfully overhauled their brand to address these needs, with a modern logo, brand campaign and an updated “Flavor of Now” menu with fresher ingredients and adventurous options like a Honey Sriracha crust and Chicken-Bacon Parmesan pizza.
Understanding what your target demographic is seeking and meeting them where they’re at is key to leading the competition, and if that means refreshing or rebranding to stay relevant and ahead of the curve, it’s strategically smart to do so.
An outdated or offensive brand identity
Now more than ever, brands must strategically navigate a swiftly changing, charged cultural and social landscape if they want to stay competitive and relevant. Customers demand more of their favorite brands and won’t hesitate to hold them accountable online for lack of transparency or diversity, ignoring sustainable, ethical practices, not having charitable giving in place and even calling out basic brand values as tone-deaf or offensive. If this applies to your business, or you suspect it might account for recent negative feedback or lagging sales, then a strategic rebrand is most certainly in order.
Recently, an unprecedented number of household name brands have overhauled their entire business model, and in some cases, even their name, to counteract unflattering public perception. Uncle Ben’s, Eskimo Pies, Mrs. Butterworth’s and even NFL teams like the Washington Redskins (now the Washington Football Team) changed their names, logos, packaging, brand identities and commitment to diversity practices to address large-scale outcries of racism among customers.
Other brands like Airbnb chose to simply redesign their signature logo to keep it fresh, modern and on-trend for a younger audience. And Airbnb’s travel rental competitor Vrbo updated their name for a very different reason – extensive research revealed “V-R-B-O” was hard to say and remember. So the pronunciation was modified to “ver-boh”, which was how fans were already saying it, and is easier to translate to more languages. Along with a fun, colorful new logo, their website was updated with a helpful announcement page about the name and brand identity refresh so customers could clearly understand the reasons for the change and more closely associate the brand with “vacation” and “the excitement of new adventures” during future bookings. The transparency of this update gained positive buzz among fans and has increased their profile in a very competitive travel space.
Before you commit to a rebrand, take a deeper look into the competitive landscape and what your customers need most in the space. Are your sales falling behind for no clear reason? Does social listening reveal negative feedback or reviews about your brand’s image or offerings? Are there pivotal changes to your business that will affect or add to your current services? Or maybe you simply haven’t updated your brand’s look and messaging in years and feel like it’s become outdated? Assessing your brand from every angle and taking a proactive approach will help reveal if a strategic rebrand is truly right for you.
Could your brand benefit from a refresh? Let’s talk and see if it makes sense for you. Connect with Barbara Wray at barbara@wickmarketing.com or (512) 479-9834
